Rewriting novels for a young audience: A corpus-assisted comparison between two versions of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

By applying corpus linguistics methods of investigation, this paper identifies the differences that characterize the young-adults version of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown from the original version targeting an adult audience, thus contributing to the very few linguistic case-studies analysing intralingual literary adaptations for children. Some ‘traditional’ adaptation strategies seem to be at play, namely Purification, Language adaptation, Abridgment and Localization. However, the analyses also highlighted other types of adjustments which cannot be subsumed in the above categories and which were observed also in the only other similar previous linguistic study on intralingual adaptations for the young (Bianchi 2018). This suggests the need for a revised classification of adaptation strategies, specific for intralingual adaptations for the young.